01A 3D page has to teach something.
Most product pages are fine as photographs. An interactive scene is worth the cost when the photograph cannot answer the question: how the object is built, how one finish differs from another, or how one moment becomes the next. If the scene does not answer a question, it is a loading spinner with better manners.
At Sitepilo, one interactive object starts at US$100 and is often about a week. A narrative website starts at US$200, including a longer piece. Bug fixes and further development on an existing site start at US$30. The quote names the scenes. Those prices include a phone fallback. They do not include building a 3D model from nothing, unless the quote says so.
The examples below are studio studies. They are not client launches, and they are not results from someone else’s traffic.
02Example: an object with layers.
The homepage of this site has a 3D study. You can drag it. A second control separates the layers so the parts read one at a time. There is a still image underneath, for when the scene cannot start. The geometry is ours. It is not a client’s product, and it is not for sale.
That is the pattern we would reuse for a real product: one object, a small number of interactions, a fallback still, and a sentence next to it that says what the visitor just saw. The page around the scene still needs a next step, usually a product or an enquiry. A scene with no next step is a demo reel.
The commercial version of this pattern starts at US$100. See interactive 3D websites.
03Example: The Odyssey, still to still.
The Odyssey is a long story told as a series of pictures. The reader rests on a still. Between chapters, a short video or a WebGL shader pass plays at its own speed and lands on the next still. The pass starts on the picture already on screen, so the join does not flash. The reader does not scrub. Scrubbing a transition fights the reason it exists, which is to finish.
There are ten of those handoffs in the study, plus chapter text on the fixed stage. Phone viewers get a smaller video. Reduced motion skips the effect and keeps the sequence. The visuals are generated for the study. There is no film license and no client.
The case study page includes one of the videos and the stack: GSAP, ScrollTrigger, Lenis, and the shader passes. A narrative website in this method starts at US$200, including a longer piece. The quote names how many scenes are in the first version.
04What to require before you commission one.
Ask where it fails closed. A phone, a slow connection, and a visitor who has asked the operating system for less motion each need an answer that is still the page, not an empty box. Ask who makes the model, who owns the files, and which still can be swapped without a developer. Ask what the scene is for, in one sentence.
Then send that sentence with the enquiry, plus whether a model already exists. We reply with a range and a timeline. The Odyssey case study is the longest public example. The homepage object is the shortest. Neither is a client result, and the pages say so.